To give our members and potential members something new to read every week these new weekly posts have been inspired by our Past President (and award winner) Marie Grace Cannon

So our first author is our very own President-Elect Simon Burton, who is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of CB Resourcing, a leading knowledge & information management recruitment business.

In March Simon was asked, “how do you choose a syndicated market research publisher”.

Simon decided to add his thoughts an wrote an article which he posted on LinkedIn. Below is the following script.

What is it you’re hoping to achieve? Make a list of the key metrics you need and check with the publisher they are in the report. Ask for a sample of how their data is presented/segmented.

Is the market you’re looking at realistically large enough to have a publisher cover it in detail? Are you better off identifying an expert or consultant? There are many firms that seem to publish research on every niche in every geography but its worth going through some checks on the publisher before using your budget.

Check out their Analysts on LinkedIn, do they have the profiles of domain experts or generalists covering many industries each?

Find some industry conferences – are their Analysts listed as speakers at key industry events?

Are their Analysts quoted in the media as experts on the industry you’re researching?

If a firm seems to cover every niche subject you can think of, they should have a very large Analyst team if they are producing good research. If you find on LinkedIn they only have 10 employees you need to do some digging into their methodology or how exactly they can carry out such a broad range of research. Alarm bells should be ringing if they publish on multiple disparate industries with a very small team.

Ask for the methodology – flimsy methodologies are can usually be quickly identified. If it’s all just desk research packaged into reports that’s usually not enough, ideally Analysts are well known and have senior level industry access to corroborate their research findings through primary research interviews.

Talk to the sales teams at one of the major market research aggregators too – what feedback have they had, see if there is any consensus.

Reach out to a couple of people in the industry you’re looking at – for say life sciences, ask a couple of market intelligence managers in pharmaceutical companies if they can tell you which Analysts they trust.

Try and get the publisher to include some access to the author of the report to ensure you fully understand their definitions of the market and any other relevant context about the research.

There are many high-quality research firms out there doing fantastic work. Some extra due diligence can help you make the right choice, basic LinkedIn research can help you quickly see if the Analyst firm has the expertise in house they claim to have.